Not My MAGAza

President Trump sounded like the GOP of old.

During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening in Washington D.C., the 47th president of the United States announced plans for Gaza to essentially become a U.S. protectorate. In Trump’s own words, the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it.” Trump called for the Palestinian people to leave their homes and lives behind in Gaza, noting that the region “is a hellhole” before pitching a new development for the Palestinian people on a piece of land he hopes to be granted by the nations of Jordan and Egypt. Trump also stated that if U.S. troops are necessary to wrest control of the region, then so be it. Expanding on his vision for Gaza, Trump called the strip “the Riviera of the Middle East” and suggested a new, international community “including Palestinians” would live in the 25-mile long stretch of coastal land located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

Netanyahu, who is fresh off a 16-month bombing campaign that has reduced Gaza to rubble and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians following the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, barely spoke a word throughout the press conference, which caught journalists and Trump’s own supporters off guard. Though Trump, a real estate mogul in another life, has repeatedly eyed development of the Gaza Strip, this was the first time he openly called for the U.S. to own it, rebuild it, and presumably protect it from further incursions in the region. When incredulous reporters questioned U.S. involvement in the sovereign territory of Gaza, Trump replied that he envisions “a long-term ownership position” in the Strip.

Despite Trump’s claim that “everybody” loved the idea, the Saudis weren’t happy. It was just before dawn in Riyadh when the House of Saud dismissed the plan outright. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reaffirms its unequivocal rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, land annexations, or attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land,” read a statement released by the Saudi Foreign Ministry. “The international community has a duty today to alleviate the severe humanitarian suffering endured by the Palestinian people, who will re steadfast on their land and will not move from it.”

Missing from the Saudis’ statement was a willingness to accept any of the nearly 2 million Palestinian refugees into its large and wealthy nation. Some of that hesitancy can be owed to the fact that Palestinian militant groups have sowed violence in Arab states that have attempted to incorporate Palestinian refugees over the last half century. More than 250,000 Palestinian refugees are estimated to have fled to Jordan in the late 1960s following the Six-Day War. Conflict followed the refugees as Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) launched repeated attacks against King Hussein of Jordan, climaxing in the early 1970s when guerilla fighters led by Abu Ali Iyad squared off against Jordanian forces in the northern city of Ajloun.

Abu Ali Iyad was eventually killed by the Jordanians in the countryside of Ajloun, but PLO members struck back in November of 1971 when they assassinated Wasfi Tal, Jordan’s 15th prime minister. In Lebanon too, Palestinian militants created division and ultimately played a major part in one of the bloodiest civil wars in the history of the Middle East, a conflict from which Lebanon has never truly recovered. The fighting between Christian militias and Palestinian militants lasted for more than a decade before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 led to the expulsion of the PLO from its Beirut headquarters in Lebanese territory. 

And in Kuwait, the Palestinians fared no better. After the PLO endorsed the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait between August 1990–February 1991, Kuwait’s government responded by expelling essentially all of its Palestinian population, at that time estimated to be more than 200,000 Palestinians. It didn’t matter to Kuwaiti officials that the vast majority of that population had lived peacefully in Kuwait for decades and had not supported the PLO’s reckless endorsement; the Kuwaitis had had enough. 

So it would be rather unfair to Trump to act as if his calls for a new autonomous zone for the Palestinian people is only about American and Israeli economic opportunities in the Gaza Strip—a development his son-in-law Jared Kushner has repeatedly swooned over. And it would also be unfair to suggest it is the sole responsibility of any of the Arab states to incorporate nearly 2 million refugees when these nations have repeatedly suffered violence at the hands of Palestine’s most dedicated fighters. Lest we forget, it was only two months after the October 7 terrorist attacks when Hamas leadership declared that “the role of the Palestinian people wherever they are located is to resist the occupation through all available and legitimate means.” 

Incorporating any large number of Palestinian refugees carries serious security risks for whichever countries are willing to take them in. Trump’s suggestion that a piece of land be carved out somewhere between Egypt and Jordan where a new homeland for the Palestinian people can be built is the exact sort of maverick, outside-the-box showmanship that has come to define his two terms in office. Whether it’s in the interest of American taxpayers, who are facing very real economic concerns at home and a beleaguered worldview after decades of misguided worldbuilding abroad, is another question. 

Netanyahu was a man of few words on Tuesday, possibly owing to the fact that he appeared to be caught off guard by Trump’s off-the-cuff announcement. “President Trump sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism, so many attacks against us, so many trials and tribulations,” Netanyahu said. “He has a different idea and I think it’s worth paying attention to this. We’re talking about it, he’s exploring it with his people and his staff. I think it’s something that could change history.”

Netanyahu added that he agreed with Trump that U.S. ownership of Gaza was an idea “worth pursuing.” Though the plan to somehow incorporate Gaza as a U.S. asset is not Trump’s first expansionist policy maneuver during his second term in the Oval Office, it is easily his most controversial one. Trump’s calls to incorporate both Canada and Greenland hold historic precedent and would provide key military strongholds in the Arctic should issues with Russia one day arrive.

But the Middle East is another situation entirely. Trump’s peculiar brand of MAGA populism was built, in large part, thanks to the promise that a new era of Republican statesman could rectify the neoconservative policy missteps in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the Middle East, which left nearly one million dead and America’s reputation tarnished abroad and at home. U.S. ownership of Gaza implies both the overturning of international law and new defense strategies that would probably place U.S. troops on the ground in a region defined by chaos and violence. 

Troop buildup in the Middle East has long been a topic of sincere debate within the American political right following decades-long quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, which produced little results in the way of peace and stability in the region. It’s perhaps the most singular policy discussion to center the Trump movement as an unorthodox and anti-establishment political movement against late-stage Bushism. 

MAGA diehards on X defended Trump’s interventionist idea by suggesting the announcement was all part of Trump’s unconventional deal-making and that what on the surface appeared to be a vestige of the old GOP was merely Trump’s strategy of vision-casting an unimaginable breakthrough deal in the middle of a 50-year stalemate between Israel and Gaza. But no matter how you read the president’s words, the call for new nation building and further military buildup in the Middle East appears a strange brand of 4D chess, given the rhetoric that earned Trump his White House digs. 

In the midst of Trump’s plans for Gaza sat an uneasy admission from the 47th president about the ballooning death toll and displacement of the Palestinian people. With Netanyahu seated at his side, Trump was asked what would happen to the reing Palestinian population in Gaza. Trump said “we’re talking about probably 1.7 million people.” Gaza’s population before Israel’s war began was 2.3 million people which suggests more than half a million Palestinians have been killed or displaced as a result of Israel’s response to the death of 1,200 Israelis. 

At the same time Trump was calling for the U.S. to expand its economic and military footprint in Gaza, Trump also spent part of Tuesday warning Iran with Netanyahu by his side. Speaking to reporters before the evening press conference, Trump said he has left instructions to “obliterate” Iran if its government assassinates Trump or any other sitting president in the future. 

“That would be a terrible thing for them to do,” Trump told Fox News reporter Peter Doocy. “If they do it, they get obliterated. There wouldn’t be anything left.”

For Netanyahu, Tuesday couldn’t have gone any smoother. Though he may have to deal with a U.S. presence in Gaza, it’s likely the area will at some point end up back in the hands of the Israelis. And despite an arrest warrant issued by judges at the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu in November of 2024, the Israeli prime minister was treated with the utmost respect during his visit to D.C. Instead of being arrested or even admonished for the role he has played in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza over the last year and a half, Bibi was treated with dignity and handed an olive branch that benefits his nation and its people first and foremost. 

Trump found favor with his most ardent supporters who cherry-picked video of Netanyahu allegedly looking uncomfortable as Trump announced his plans for U.S. ownership of Gaza. The level of cope became exceedingly unhinged as the evening wore on. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene responded to Trump’s plan by suggesting U.S. troops in Gaza and the displacement of 1.7 million Palestinians would somehow bring an end to endless wars.

“Gaza MUST BE FREE of Hamas,” wrote Secretary of State Marco Rubio in response to Trump’s announcement. “The United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again. Our pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people.”

Regardless of where one lands politically on the never-ending turmoil in the Middle East and specifically Gaza, it’s hard to believe many Trump voters voted for “Make Gaza Beautiful Again.” We voted for “Make America Great Again.” The policy that has subverted our nation’s core strengths over the last half century and drove so many into the booth to pull the lever for Trump has been our unwarranted and pigheaded incursions into places such as Vietnam, and Afghanistan, and Ukraine. And Gaza is no different. 

Not a single American soldier should die protecting it from Muslim terrorists or Zionist zealots, and not a single tax dollar should be spent rebuilding it when North Carolina, East Palestine, Los Angeles, and Lahaina are still recovering from natural devastation and human mismanagement. Nor should a penny of our reserve be spent on paving over a sovereign nation and removing its people from the land so the Israelis can eventually, at some point down the line, retain ownership. 

These are the politics of the old GOP, the ones many conservatives hoped we had thoroughly discarded into the trash heap of malignant ideas. And yet here we are, the same as ever, agitating in the Middle East, doing the bidding of another nation and the best argument against the most obvious conclusions is that this is all somehow a fantastic bit of Magnus Carlsen–level chess hypnosis. I hope they’re right. I hope it all gets walked back in the coming days and Trump pivots to a deal we can’t see coming. Because until then, the jury’s out on our new-era Republican statesman who appears no different in tone and tenor than the ones we’ve long suffered.